Aunt Agatha

In just a few days Aunt Agatha is due to farrow. After some military planning she was brought into the barn, and settled quickly to the deep straw, regular supplies of pea pods and frequent rubs. She shivers ecstatically under energetic fingers. When she lies down I can see the piglets move in her wonderfully large belly, and her rear teats are huge, the ones towards the front slowly filling with milk.
This evening I hung the heat lamp over the creep area and she came to investigate. She can't reach it, but she has sniffed and taken its scent into her memory bank. I turned it on to see how she would react, but after some minor curiosity she simply scratched her sides and arse against the creep bars and lay down once more. I've turned off the lamp, but I'm hoping that when the piglets come, she won't now be unnerved by the glowing red beacon.
The piglets probably don't need the heat lamp at this time of year but I want to make sure that they are attracted to the creep area and can retreat if they feel their mother flopping to the ground; inadvertent killing of small young piglets by huge ponderous mothers is not so much frequent as an expected part of every birth - no doubt that's why they can have so many in a litter.
I am all eager anticipation and nervousness, but for now we two commune, sharing oinks and snorts like a pair of biddies at bingo.

Cheerful creatures - for now

Another first. I've been and gone and bought some young turkey poults. Funny critters. They chirp and chirrup continuously, companionably, cheerily. Unlike most other birds they don't seem to show any signs of nervousness. Perhaps they are planning to eat me at Christmas?
Putting them to bed is a two person job. They happily come and greet you, but show no interest or understanding that they need to go into the cosy straw-filled hut as it gets dark. Ducks, geese, hens all learn after a few usherings that this is the routine, but the turkey's natural boldness means they don't move away from you towards shelter, they come to meet you instead.
When I was shown round the lovely farm where these Norfolk Blacks came from I was in absolute awe of the size of the stags, and chortled at the leather saddles worn by the hens. But stags can enjoy a bit of the rough stuff, and the leather is to protect the females from over amorous attention.
I've put the turkeys in the garden on fresh ground and I can hear them chortle through the window. The gobbling noise made by the adult stags is hilarious, so let's hope mine get a chance to do that before the roast tatties shout for a meaty accompaniment.

Bat splat

Remember this? I'm truly grateful the llama didn't make his mound on the windowsill. But the bats don't show the same reticence.
The front of the house and two of the windows are crusted and splatted with flying rodent (are bats rodents?) guano.
The photo shows the upstairs window sill, above which is the bat cave entrance. I hear hundreds of them squeaking and scuttling about in the loft, they then stick their arses out the hole, do a quick poo and then fly off into fly-munching land. Charming habits.
Most nights two or three whirl above my head in the bedroom, and each time you find a picture askew you can bet a bat is snoring behind it. I wonder if the bat splat is any good on the compost heap?

Casserole mole

First it was polytunnel-toad, now it's casserole-mole. Where will it end? Bedroom-badger? Pantry-pig? Barn-owl?
"The cat brought in a mole" is muttered into my ear as I stuff my head more firmly under the pillow (not my turn to do the animals). Half an hour later I open the scullery door and a deep brown mole is scuttling about in the shadows. I shut the scullery door. I sit and think and eat my breakfast. I open the scullery door, grab a casserole and decide to carry said mole out in that. I have bare feet and vulnerable fingers. I shut the scullery door and go and get gloves and shoes. I open the scullery door and watch the mole choose between tins of baked beans and plum tomatoes before it decides to hide behind the shelving. It makes a hell of a noise rattling everything it bangs into. I shut the scullery door and finish the piece I was reading in the paper. Even louder rustling noises start. I open the scullery door (hopefully for the last time this morning) and watch Mr Mole wander across my path. Gotcha! I pick him up (gloves on), put him in the casserole and slam shut the lid. I carry the lot outside and put it in the shade while I decide what to do with him. The lid bounces off. I slam it back shut and stick a heavy weight on top. There is now a cursing and swearing mole inside my casserole.
What to do with him? We've trapped at least five moles in the veg patch this season and I don't want him anywhere near my swiftly growing foodstuffs. I could stew him without having to take him out of the pot. But because it's haymaking day and there is more than enough stress going round what with one tractor having to have new tyres RIGHT NOW, and the other waiting for me to pick up its box-fresh starter motor all before baling and carting can proceed, killing of the innocents is less than usually tempting. Casserole-mole is given a reprieve and is dumped in a field some way from the house and garden. No doubt he'll be back, and the traps are waiting.

Polytunnel toad

I do like a toad. Even when they come hopping into the house to watch the ten o'clock news, as they do. These summer evenings the doors are left open and as the toads emerge from behind the damp greenness left lazily and deliberately unweeded from round the doorway, they hop into the boot room or venture more daringly across the kitchen, drawn by the BBC news headlines.
The polytunnel is home to another batch of toads. They hunt beneath the crush of courgettes, the thicket of tomatoes, the panoply of peas, relishing the damp soil, the flies, slugs and other edibles.
This is a photo of the polytunnel-toad; not as large as the news-at-ten-toad, but a charmer, all the same.



The polytunnel is looking very green, apart from the sweet peas, that produce a big bunch of pink, lilac, purple and red for the table every evening. But I want it to look even more colourful, full of flowers, and that's just starting to happen. The courgette blooms are there but you have to dig deep under the huge raspy leaves to see them; the tomato flowers are also shy, and their fruits are completely green for now. The spherical yellow courgettes are only just starting to fruit and bulge.
There is one baby aubergine, already purple, and the mass of peas are, to be fair, dotted with white flowers. The french beans are thinking about flowering. Another week and I'll be rewarded.

I was good!

This morning I heard a furious rustling and thumping coming from the kitchen. When I went to investigate, Fenn was looking most excited but she hadn't, as I'd feared, stolen any of the hot rolls I'd recently taken out of the oven. But something had taken advantage of the open door, and there were sweet pea petals scattered all over the floor.
A juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker had found its way in and was fluttering, terrified, in the window. I easily picked it up, its gorgeous black and white stripes and scarlet cap, long pointy beak, still in my hand but so very much alive.
I hesitated. Should I take a fabulous close-up picture for my album and the blog, or should I be kind and let it go immediately?
I opened the window, opened my hand and off it flew.

Photo courtesy of natureinview.co.uk

Too bucolic for words

First it was elderflower champagne, then it was strawberries, next tiny and delicious peas and baby courgettes. Then gooseberries for a crumble, wild strawberries as a snack and now more elderflowers, but this time for cordial.
I'm going to disappear up my own gingham pinny.
But to bring me back down to earth I removed a tapeworm segment from the cat's arse. And stuffed a worming tablet down its gob. Oh, and cleared up a regurgitated mouse (from the cat, the cat!). I did a heap of fairly stinky animal pooh related tasks too. Oh, and sat on some tar and made the seat of my pants sticky. It's an idyll.

When your world suddenly shrinks

Sheep shorn, they are moved into the orchard to graze down the long grass. The llama isn't allowed in as he can kill a fruit tree at twenty paces; not by spitting but by mercilessly peeling off the bark with his buck teeth. So he gets left in the field that now needs topping to remove the sharp tall growth unfit for haymaking, and that can cut the soft part between the toes of the sheep as they walk through it.
The tractor goes round and round as Humphrey mews in distrust. He sits right in the centre, watching his patch of long, semi-camouflaging grasses get smaller and smaller. He decides that the tractor is boss and then swiftly stands and steps sideways into the topped area, peering over the gate to check all his ovine friends are close by. Satisfied, he starts to nibble the cut stems.

A day for shearing

214 sheep sheared in the barn today, 41 of them mine.
Now the mums are shorn their lambs look nearly as big, and at just 10 weeks old.
The two rams have been penned into a small corral in the barn to get reacquainted, an annual post-shearing ritual, smelling different as they do without their hot oily fleece. I've just had fun disentangling one from the other, horns wrapped up like an executive puzzle.
The dams and lambs are chewing on the fresh succulent grass and herbs in the orchard, giving the geese a run for their money.
In this warm, wet weather it's a huge relief that none had maggots or any sign of them, and without their fleece they should now be fine until the autumn.
Shearing done, it's time to start thinking about haymaking. Again.

My little poppy

Tissue thin and wildly coloured with sooty black nose, simple, evocative, in memoriam and seriously mind-altering...the poppy is a flower that sends thoughts darting in multiple directions from the profound to the commercially indulgent.
They emerge, singly, in the dry dust of the garden wall, flourish for a day or two and then seep back into the earth.
I was at a dinner with friends, the topic was massage, when a wonderfully erudite and knowledgeable woman in her ninth decade announced that she had once been massaged in a Chinese opium den....you could have heard a poppy drop.

My life as a brick

There are many, many advantages to working in the arts sector. Mostly, it's the pleasure of working with artists. And sometimes, just occasionally, a special piece of work will find its way into your hand, and nestle happily in the house to be stroked (the three dimensional tapestry of Mopsa), hung from a hook (a framed sketch from a performance I supported), or gawped at in admiration over many years (a seven foot wooden sculpture of a head in profile).
Yesterday I had a strange delivery, a small but heavy parcel with a note attached warning me not to drop it on my toe. In my hand was a brick, but no ordinary brick. It had been covered in handmade unique textiles, printed and stitched with words I wrote for an old friend over a year ago.
After a (continuing) lively career in theatre, Julia turned her talents to textiles and asked people she knew to contribute to her degree show by asking for stories concerning objects from the family home that were precious in some way, however mundane or inexpensive. I shared this memory:
“It’s funny how so many precious family objects are related to the kitchen, to food, to the pleasure of eating together. I have several things from my mother’s kitchen that I could never bear to throw away, and that give me a warm feeling as I use or touch them. There’s the small, thick chopping board, barely large enough to cut a grapefruit, an off-cut from some post-war packing case, scarred and shaped by use. Then there’s the Nutbrown sandwich toaster, two rounds of hinged tin with long handles and chipped red wooden grips that lock, keeping the slices of bread and filling pressed together whilst they perch over the gas ring, bubbling butter and cheesy fat. I haven’t used it since childhood but it hangs by my cooker, just in case.
"Then there‘s the ancient Kenwood mixer that my mother nagged me for years to take and use, to give her more space in her tiny kitchen. I use it for cakes, whizzing up Thai green curry paste and best of all for making sausages. I loved using the mincer as a child, watching the trails of meaty worms emerge. Now I raise pigs and make my own sausages using the mincer and sausage attachment.
"Last of all are my Mother’s recipe books; not the ones by Marguerite Patten or Florence Greenberg, although I have several of those, but her own notebooks, covered in scrawl and bulked out by clippings from the Evening Standard. I still make her Dutch Apple Cake, covered in a Demarara, cinnamon and mixed spice crust”.
The brick is covered in dyed and digitally printed linen, with folds stitched as neatly as hospital corners. There is another piece of linen stitched on as a carrying handle. Printed onto the fabric are images of Kenwood attachments and the manufacturer's numbers for each component. A metal mincer cutter is held on tight with button thread and some of my words are printed on and stitched into the material.
So, after being exhibited alongside a host of other bricks, it's made its way to me - how lovely is that?
A brick was never as much my brick as this brick.

Talking of sheep...

...who, exactly, voted for the BNP in the European elections? Sometimes it's really hard to believe in freedom of speech.

Sheep. Lots and lots of sheep.

Off to the National Sheep South West show yesterday, just a heap of stones' throws away from here. Meet Big Boy (I have no idea if he has a name), a Blue Faced Leicester ram. He was the size of a donkey. I looked for a donkey to put alongside so you could see what I mean, but it was a sheep fair, not a donkey derby.
Although open to all, it was an event for sheep farmers, with serious conversation and debates about electronic identification, stalls of expensive sheep stuff to buy and for a lighthearted moment, shearing competitions and sheepdog demonstrations. I looked down microscopes at parasites and worms, fingered fleece, and took away a mouse mat in the shape of a sheep.

Mending wall

There are patches of vertically stoned walls across the farm, no mortar, just laid dry, clamped together with earth and hope. Gradually they get repaired, even though they are just dots and dashes in the lines of the earth banks. Round the corner from the house is a flowerbed, lying up against an old boarded cowpen. Full of weeds and foxgloves it was also full of old ash tree stump. The digger put paid to that with chains and the flick of a finger, which sent yet more of the retaining stone wall tumbling down.
So in-house expertise set to work and produced a work of beauty. It's planted up now with herbs, surplus tomato, courgette and cucumber plants.
Walls seem to be on people's minds at the moment. Click on the pics for more detail.

Monochrome idyll

There's Claude, posing in the gateway. Eustace was probably off catching shrews. A little earlier a squirrel was squawking at the cats. It was sitting on a branch of the oak on the left making angry squirrel noises and shaking its tail. I'm not sure I've knowingly heard a squirrel hiss and chatter before, but whatever he was saying it wasn't polite. Two dogs, two cats and two people didn't frighten him away. When he'd said his piece he swung off from tree to tree to do what squirrels do.
And it's amazing how monochrome can make a hot day cool.

From whinge to wonder

It's hunt the orchid time again. Sadly, I can't yet boast of fields full of the beauties, but with that wonderful example just an inch away on the map, I hope that each year my patches will slowly start to increase. This is just the beginning of their growing season, and I will keep going back to check on progress and to count them up. No cows or sheep will go on these fields until the seed has set.

Standing up for the farmer

The other day Arthur Clewley remarked on this here blog that single farm payment for farmers was pretty much the same as MP's expenses. My head spun a bit at that but I gave it due consideration, not wanting to stand up for farmers (an unhomogenous crew) just because we all have mud under our fingernails. After some head scratching I couldn't see that the one could be equated with the other, whatever one's position on public subsidy.
And then I read my copy of The Ark, and noted that Defra is considering new proposals for an independent animal health unit that might be better suited to making decisions about dealing with animal disease outbreaks, and that the cost should be borne not entirely but significantly by livestock farmers. The head spinning returned. After I'd gone through the scratching bit again, I continued bemused.
Firstly, if I recall correctly, the last foot and mouth outbreak was caused by government laboratories, not by farmers. I suppose that if the labs become independent then the government could start pointing their finger outwards for a change. But there is a bigger issue at stake here.
Farmers produce food for everyone, and they receive an ever reducing cut for this. The supermarkets then take a whopping profit, and the consumer gets to fill their trolley with goods. It's in everyone's interest that food is safe, and it's not a responsibility that just sits at the beginning of the food chain. Farmers are not the main beneficiaries of disease control in livestock - everyone who sells or buys meat (or milk, cheese, butter, yoghourt, eggs, wool, leather etc) is implicated. In fact, if you put farmers under any more financial strain the consumer will lose out; reduced availability of food of local providence, corners cut, welfare interests skirted round, more disease. And supermarkets will just buy their goods from overseas. A vicious and unvirtuous circle.
An equivalent approach in another sector would be expecting individuals with swine flu to pay for the production of Tamiflu for all.
I'm not against an independent body being in charge of animal disease outbreaks; the costs of foot and mouth in 2001 were huge and it's entirely possible that if an independent body had been in charge the costs may have been far smaller, the carnage far more limited, and the tourism industry less affected, based on simple affordability and less melodramatic scaremongering.
But Defra's proposals show a painfully blinkered view of the food sector. It isn't possible to survive as a food producer without making enough money to live on and to invest back into one's business; the farmer struggles whilst the supermarket booms. If the government is no longer interested in whether the UK can produce its own food and is happy with an increasing reliance on imports, it should say so. If it wants to break the back of British farming, its proposals if implemented will certainly provide further straws.

Not long for this world

I don't know if it's just this pair or whether all jackdaws are stupid. But I suspect it is just the parents of this young bird.
Every year they build a nest in the metal rafters of the modern barn, thirty feet up. Every year the nest is either attacked by buzzards or falls from its precarious perch and the nestlings die.
This morning I find one dead bird lying on the dirt, but this one has come down with the nest and sits in the cup of straw, just as it did thirty feet up. It won't last long, and I'm not saving it...there are far too many jackdaws around as it is, mobbing my duck eggs, goslings and ducklings.
But the parents will build a fresh nest in exactly the same place, and hatch more eggs, with the same consequences.

The Women's Room

Hearing that Marilyn French had died I picked up my furled and yellowed paperback of The Women's Room for a re-visitation.
I'd devoured it, age sixteen, as an angry emerging feminist. I can't remember how many times I reread the book, stunned and drowning in the future horrors that might lie in wait for me; drudgery, mopping, unwanted children, denied potential and extreme chauvinism. I looked about me, at the households I knew and saw some great female role models, but mostly I saw housewives, pretty happy it appeared to me on the surface, but, I asked myself, was Marilyn French revealing the murkier truths that would never be shared across the generations or across the garden fence, with a teenager?
Now, it somehow lacks the punch it did then. Once I was enthralled, engaged, furious. Now it has the feel of melodrama and soap. The pages don't turn as rapidly, the impact is cushioned. Is it because the tantrum teenager with fresh ideals is a matured cynical creature? Is it that I look back in almost disbelief at the tiny limiting box described and prescribed for women? I don't think so. I suspect instead that we all know more, have become worldly in what is probably an uncivilising manner, and are therefore increasingly unshockable by the smallness of most lives. And I don't like that. I preferred feeling the raw emotion that cascaded over the sixteen year old and the utter determination that I would never be that trapped in any mesh but that which I created for myself. Whether I avoided the sticky cobweb, who knows?

What animal am I?

One fledgling spadger sits precariously on Hard Hattie. Considering the incredible monsoon weather, Hattie is about the only warm, dryish spot for miles. I'm sure she can feel the wee bird, but what can she do? Her arms aren't long enough to swipe at it. She can't run fast enough to dislodge it. It must be like having a hugely irritating boss to whom you just can't speak your mind, no matter how much your nerves are screaming "I've got to DO something about that squirt!".
But I suppose to be a tortoise is to be calm, accepting and philosophical. Taking life slow. Munching thoughtfully on greenery, nothing too rich to stir up the blood or humours.
I am nothing like a tortoise, notwithstanding my increasingly wrinkly hands, tortured by farm stuff and gardening. If I had to choose, a Bernese Mountain dog would, obviously, not be far from the top of the list, but in truth? My inner self is one of these. My outer self is one of these. And my aspirational self, definitely one of these.

Revenge is sweet

You might be able to tell, but just in case not, this is a rat's head. Just the head. No body. No tail. No claws. Just the head. Result!
This may or may not be the bastard that ate all my ducklings (opinions have been expressed, and rat, mink and polecat have all been fingered for the crime); all I know is that there is most definitely one less rat on the farm, and that it suffered a wonderfully gruesome, hopefully extraordinarily painful, demise.
I skip, I dance, I rain blessings on the head of whatever cat, dog, fox, beast, had this toothy monster for breakfast.
Oh, and the day just gets better and better (yup, I know, pride comes before a fall). The Last Ewe finally lambed today, exactly one month after the rest, and one week beyond the possible due date (extended pregnancies notwithstanding). The day after tomorrow I will have the MOST HUMONGOUS LIE-IN!

I'm claiming it on expenses

Like most people, I've been watching the unravelling of the MP's expenses scandal open-mouthed. I'm so jealous I can hardly splutter forth venom. As an M.P there'd be no need to pay for my Tampax anymore; I could have my poshest rugs repaired and paid for by other tax payers; I'd enjoy a variety of houses and flats pretending I'm living in whichever one took my accountant's fancy that week; I'd get my mole problems sorted at no cost to myself, and I wouldn't have to show receipts for slap up meals or treats that cost less than £250. Best of all, none of this would put a dent in my £65,000 salary. Show me the money!
There'd be one downside though, come to think of it.
No-one would trust me ever again. I would be despised at least as much as Fred the Shred. None of my good intentions or pleas for a refocussing on the important things would have any credence. My name, my judgement and my honour would be mud and filth. I'd have to spend all my time making feeble excuses rather than bellowing "Hear, hear" in the House, and have to satisfy myself instead with cries of "I didn't break any rules" in the comfort of one of my other houses.
But at least I'd have the satisfaction of knowing incontrovertibly that I'd been one of the gang responsible for ending parliament as we know it. My name will be forever secure in the history books.
And that is my 400th blog post. What a sad way to mark this mini milestone.

Empty nest

I'm seriously down today. I've spent the last couple of months tending to my incubators, had a first decent hatch of ducklings, a second lousy one, tweaked my technique and humidity and had a good third hatch. Last night eighteen glorious ducklings from one to four days old were scuttling about under the heat lamp. I covered their run with weldmesh as always and went to bed.
After six weeks of early lamb-checking rises I have my first lie- in; not because The Last Ewe has lambed, but because she's been told to get on with it as best she might as sleep deprivation can drive you crazy.
There's a polite cough by the bedside. "Are you awake?" Grunt. "We've had a bit of a disaster". I'm wide awake now. "How many ducklings were in the stable?". Eighteen. "Oh. They've all gone".
There in the corner of the stable is a huge heap of fresh earth, the discarded material from a new rat run. The rats have had every single duckling. I want to curl into a sobbing heap. All that effort, mine and the duckling's. I feel sick.
I head to the office, turn on the computer and buy a metal cage brooder that will take 50 birds.
I take Fenn for a walk and there in the grass is an empty egg, clearly predated, not hatched. Sometimes I really hate nature.

2009's king of the castle

This is a makeshift creep feeder, a dry place to put a small trough of lamb food, with bars across the front (well, back if you are looking at this photo - the bars are out of sight) so that the ewes can't get in but the wee ones can.
Not that they are wee any more...
The creep feed allows the few smaller lambs to supplement their diet if they aren't getting enough milk. We don't supplement the lamb's diet unless a ewe or two is struggling to keep up with the demands of her young, preferring a slow grown grass fed lamb, so the creep feed won't be made available for much longer.
It's crucial to remember (and that doesn't always happen) NOT to put the ark too close to the fence, or with a couple of hops, skips and jumps the lambs bound over the fence and into the blue yonder, hysterical with freedom until they are utterly unable to get back to mother and bleat piteously for some human sap to come and sort it all out.
Once the first lamb is up on the ark, rattling the tin with their sharp percussive hooves, their mates join in until there is no more room at the inn.
Oh, and The Last Ewe (uppercase, up the duff and unpopular) still hasn't lambed.

A spring day

The skies may have been threatening but what a gorgeous day. Everywhere I turn there is something shouting "Look at me! This way!", another flower, an orange tip butterfly, goldfinches and swallows.
With the dogs I'm never allowed to stay still for more than a minute, so catching a snap of butterflies and whooshing birds is not likely. But as long as it's not outrageously windy, I can do a flower or two. And the moth was most generous and hardly fluttered an antenna.

Five finger-piglets!

Hoorah, the poet who wrote the phrase I'm most likely to use at the drop of a picnic, has been named Poet Laureate. Congratulations to the marvellous Carol Ann Duffy.
And the phrase? "Five finger-piglets" of course, the best description I've ever heard of a hand greedily hunting through a box of chocs.
As it was printed in the Guardian a year or three ago, I don't think I'm breaking any rules by repeating it here.

Chocs
by Carol Ann Duffy

Into the half-pound box of
Moonlight
my small hand crept,
There was an electrifying rustle.
There was a dark and glamorous scent.
Into my open, religious mouth
the first Marzipan Moment went.

Down in the crinkly second layer
five finger-piglets snuffled
among the Hazelnut Whirl,
the Caramel Swirl,
the Black Cherry and Almond Truffle.

Bliss.

I chomped, I gorged,
I stuffed my face,
till only the Coffee Cream
was left for the owner of the box -
tough luck, Ann Pope -
oh, and half an Orange Supreme.

The fear of the pig

How can someone who keeps pigs not be thinking about swine flu?
Like everyone, I'm confused. Do we have a pandemic of pigs, every known breed keeling over from some deadly virus? No. Is eating pork somehow dangerous this week when it wasn't last? No. Are people in Mexico dying from a ghastly influenza because their health care system isn't looking after them properly? Yes. Is there a risk to vulnerable people? It would seem so, yes. Is there a need to take this all very seriously indeed? With people dying, yes, of course. Is religion entering the fray? Yes; Israel wants to change the name to Mexican flu because Jews are not allowed to eat pork (although I'm Jewish and I raise pigs, but there you are, there's always one). And another country whose predominant population also abhors the swine is killing all its pigs even though there are no cases of swine flu yet reported there and there is no suggestion that it is present in the pigs raised by minority groups for their use, either (do you get the feeling that Salem has moved to Egypt?).
Why do we so easily rush to blame something other than human error; inadequate health systems and inadequate care of livestock (if that's behind this and at the moment it seems unlikely that any pig has been involved) are down to people failing each other and their animals.
I'm very concerned for the poor pig whose name has been taken in vain and is now global public enemy no.1, and of course for pig farmers. And no, it hasn't taken anyone's mind off the financial crisis, just in case any politicians are deluding themselves.

A pair of goldfinches

Ok, there's only one in the photo, but the noise of the catflap being replaced sent the second goldfinch off into the nearest tree.
The catflap had been hammered beyond repair by full tilt kittens running away from the boogie man, otherwise known as the gorgeous trespassing tabby that must belong to someone, but I've no idea who, and it certainly makes itself at home, chasing my three tabbies on their own turf.

Taking a stroll

Just taking a stroll in the rain, through the farm, with the dogs, one can become the absolute centre of attention.

Ducks + water = happiness (and lots of sex)

The new duck pens have been in use for some weeks now, but I haven't been able to let them into the pond as it had to be fox-proof fenced.
About, ooh, 20 seconds after the last widget was clenched (you get the picture, lots of tools, ironmongery and stuff were used) the Aylesbury ducks were let out for a session of swimming and bonking, both of which were achieved in, ooh, 60 seconds.
The Black Indian Runners, who share the pen next door, will be allowed out tomorrow (can't have inter-duck sex or I'll get zebra ducks and unhappy customers). As it was, they came rushing to the fence and squawked to be let into the pond too.
I apologised and tried to explain that they'd get their chance soon enough.
Impatient things, ducks.
And if you peer behind the galvanised field gate you might just see a sleeping black pig.

What's next?

One ewe left to lamb, but it's a hurly burly of activity all the same. As I traipse from barn to field, to duck huts to pigs, round and round, back and forth, I stop mid tracks and look up. Where was it I was heading? What's the next job on the list? Have I forgotten to feed/check/water something?
I try to head for the top of the farm and work down so as not to miss anything, but some mini problem or distraction usually puts that idea out to grass. A sheep who's drunk her water bucket dry, a sleeping lamb that I need to check is just snoring and not ailing, a clot of blood on the grass from a ewe I know is healing from her birthing or is it something more sinister, a pig with the trots...on it goes.
Throughout the day I'm checking the egg filled incubators (last night the power in the barn where the incubators sit, tripped and I have to make sure that doesn't happen again) and that the heat lamp over the ducklings is working properly; casting an eye over newborn lambs and mums to be; peering at the back end of the sow to make sure she has taken from her serving by the boar and isn't coming back into heat; watering the seedlings in the polytunnel as there is a danger of frying in there; answering calls and queries about ducklings and posting off hatching eggs...and still on it goes.
And in between that I'm trying to sort out new work arrangements, transferring phones, broadband, banks, and talking to all those companies you really hate dealing with (if I get put on hold one more time, emailed stuff in non-English that's both unintelligible and irrelevant to my question, or told six different stories from six different reps from the same company I'm likely to decide on (very) early retirement instead (I wish!).
The dogs are looking particularly mournful as their walks have been curtailed and ad hoc but I have promised them and me a trip to the beach as soon as the last ewe has performed.
I'm not complaining, honest, just in a bit of a springtime whirlwind, and would relish a couple of days in complete slut mode with nothing to do but snore, breathe fresh air and read a new good book. Any reading suggestions for when I come out of the maelstrom?

My favourite flowers are blooming

In a hidden corner among the rubble in the garden, a small clutch of snakeshead fritillaries hang their heads shyly. But when you're as beautiful as this, what is there to be shy about?
Every night the pixies come out and paint them. I know this must be so because they always forget one or two, and leave them creamy white, a blank canvas to be filled another night.
I always believed there were fairies at the bottom of the garden. When you're this tired (two weeks into lambing), whimsy welcomes you in its warm embrace.

Welcome to the world

Two thirds of the way there now, and here's a shot of a few of the dams with lambs out on fresh grass.
Suddenly the flock has multiplied and keeping count of 30+ scampering lambs isn't easy. I have no idea how farmers with flocks that number into the hundreds manage this, or whether they just scour the field boundaries on their quadbikes to make sure nothing is hanging on the wire or caught in brambles.
I'm back to encouraging the final third to get on with it through bribery...if you have your lambs you get an extra feed of nuts and then it's onto fresh grass you go!

Lambing well underway

What do you think of my wee Scottish Fold? Seriously floppy ears, but otherwise quite perfect (in fact it is MORE than perfect - every flaw is a beauty spot). And no.5 has a great pair of lambs, and the Torwen has such a great big ram lamb he is staying entire and will remain balls akimbo for sale as a potential breeding ram. A heap of them are back out in the fields, and about half remain plump and purposeful, waiting to create a few leaping lambs of their own.

Some light relief

Another excruciating experience at the dentist. This time it wasn't the mannerless, humourless receptionist - they were fine.
My hygienist sees me every three or four months. I have fabulous teeth; unfortunately I also have lousy gums and years of dedicated NHS treatment has resulted in good times and bad; deep pockets, shallow pockets, deep pockets, yellow lorry, red lorry etc. I can't stand the sound or feel of the sonic super stud tooth cleaner and insist on the hand job every time. But today my gentle hygienist's car has broken down and one of the dentists has taken her place.
She was scientific, she was specific, she wore scary magnifying wotnots like a diamond dealer, only for both eyes. We discussed my symptoms, she explained that stress made it all worse. Thanks. She said she'd use the supersonic doodad. I said no. She said yes. She flailed about in my mouth and after a few minutes I waved my arms at her - not in defeat but in a "if you don't stop that right now I'll pull your head off" kind of way.
Frustration increased her sadistic pleasures. She mangled about in my gob with the vigour and lack of finesse of a method actor. She squirted aloe vera amd some substance made by bees into my gums and sucked out so much saliva I felt my feet dry out.
I should go to a private periodontic hospital in Bristol, she said, to close the pockets in my gums. "Over your dead body" I thought.
I wobbled into Waitrose, shoved a few necessities into a basket and stumbled to the checkout where I promptly dropped some cinnamon shower gel all over the floor. The staff couldn't have been kinder. I'll ask the checkout girl to do my teeth next time.

Fed up

Doesn't this ewe look completely fed up with waiting for her lambs to arrive? I can walk right up to the ready to pop girls without them even stirring; they just can't be bothered to move or succumb to flight instincts.
They are arriving thick and fast now, squirting out triplets and doubles and the odd single.
The larger of the triplets in each case are being fostered onto mums with just one of their own, a process that is anything but failsafe, but less risky than buying shares in a bank.
I keep trying to take a decent photo of the gorgeous Torwen lambs to post up here, but they are so frisky they all come out with the shakes. OK, back to the grindstone!

three's a crowd...

Remember when I said I'd had the ewes scanned and breathed a huge sigh of relief that only one was due to have triplets? Well, scanner man nil, ewe three.
This is the first ewe to lamb - last night, just before midnight. She was due to have twins, but had three, just like she did last year. And she was first to drop again, too.
So now it's up to the orchard every couple of hours to see what's happening, who's getting restless, dribbling mucus or looking like she's got a pain in the guts or has a head or foot poking out of her bum.
What larks. Rather them than me. All I have to do is get up at 5am for the next month.

Dittisham Lady 933 - name that pig

Can you get a gal to look up when you want her to? Nope. But here is the new Berkshire breeding sow, moments after she swayed slowly down the trailer ramp.
See those teats? She had her previous litter weaned off a few weeks back and is now dried off, but she should be in pig again; sows have two litters a year.
Various domestic names have been suggested - you can't call your first ever in-pig sow number 933 after all - and Nigella, Daphne and Primrose are all in the running. Nigella would enable future females to be Delia, Elizabeth, Sophie, Clarissa or Jane for example, whilst Daphne might run to companions named Daisy, Delilah, Doris or Dorcas. Primrose's mates could be Rose, Lilac, Primula and Peony. You get the picture.
Any ideas? I had some fabulous suggestions from you when it came to the naming of kittens, and just like Blue Peter, I can ignore any I don't like!

Stop Press...Hard Hattie has emerged

It's not only official, it has the seal of approval from the tortoise. Spring is here!
Today, the Hard Hattie of West Devon came creeping backwards out of her hibernation box. Yesterday I'd put it out in the sun to start warming the gal up, and it worked.
I've fretted mildly, on and off, all winter, just in case Hattie had gone to bed without adequate fat reserves, or that I'd done something wrong, or, or, or... but here she is, wading through long grass, chomping apple, generally giving it large. I'm incredibly pleased to see her.

Chance meetings

So much to do, so much to write, so much travel, so much thinking and planning and anticipating. It's spring, things are podding and everything is demanding, so I have been remiss and not posted for a week. A whole week! The financial year is drawing to a close and lambing hasn't even started yet.
I just wanted to share a thought on bumping into people you know when you are away from home. I was pootling about the Midlands this week and bumped into two people I had no reason to expect to see. One on a station platform, the other in an art gallery. OK, I lived in the region for twenty years but it's a HUGE region with MILLIONS of people, so why should I see anyone I know in a snappy 24 hour visit, apart from those I'd actually arranged to see?
And then on the train home I saw yet another friend and we chatted of this and that as the miles were chomped up and I felt as if the journey had been halved, having had company and conversation.

Woodland nymph

There's been playing about in the woods the last few days. Time was getting short for coppicing so it rushed to the top of the list. It's too wet to take a vehicle down, so a barrow was piled with chainsaw, loppers, appropriate lubricants (chain oil not brandy), thick thornproof gloves, and the dogs were called and off we went.
On the way there were various distractions; snow-cracked prone willows had to be cut down to restore the pathways, and I oohed and aahed at the bubbling of the new tadpoles and the fresh flush of primroses.
This Green Woodcup (or Green Elfcup) caught my eye, as it always does. I am a stickler for picking up rogue bits of plastic and twine, so I always check out patches of unnatural colour. Only this is entirely natural, and a pleasure, not a pain.

Past the dung heap

It's not a good photo. It's the one that gets sifted to the bottom of the heap and then has folks peering through the murk to test their memory of places or faces. But it's taken from the sole vantage point (other than bird's eye, and I don't have a micro-light, plane or hot air balloon) that captures a decent proportion of the farm; not easy in this undulating landscape. So I get to the top of the hill, and right smack bang where I intend to press the image making button, is a new and vast dungheap. All fine and proper, but I can't see through a dung heap.

It's snow time (again)

Well it's back.
I spent the early morning sliding round the farm feeding things and trying my best not to fall on my arse, whilst rootling around my pocket for knife, tissue or camera.
The quality of insulation provided by llama hair never fails to amaze me; the sheep had a light dusting of snow, but there were great clods of the stuff on Humphrey.
Mopsa lay belly down on the snow, unfazed by it all, in her natural element. The geese were unbothered. But I am hoping that in three weeks time we are out of this return of real winter weather and the lambs can emerge in the sun.

Time for an off-farm topic rant

Lordy, lordy, I'm getting crosser by the second.
You'd think, wouldn't you, what with the Freedom of Information Act, the desire for open government (huh!), and the stated aim of helping small businesses stay in business during this painful financial slough of despond, that access to information about government grants and tendering opportunities would be freely available to all, not on a pay per view basis like some seedy porn channel in a one night stay hotel chain.
Whether you are a third sector organisation with charitable aims of alleviating poverty, or simply a micro company doing everything you can to provide a product or service, unless you can come up with the dosh, you cannot find out what opportunities exist that you may be eminently able to exploit/deliver beautifully to a client's satisfaction. Some portals say that you can register for free (again huh!), but in fact give you a peek into limited possibilities and then pull out the stops to rake in your cash (from a couple of hundred quid up to nearly a thousand) for access to the fuller picture.
At any time I think this would be a serious failure to ensure equal access to public sector contracts and grants, would wonder if it was in fact legal, would hate the fact that some middleman was given a contract to control access to this information on behalf of the public sector by provison of some halting, circuitous, irritating portal, but now? Now you can add immoral, spiteful, stupid and shortsighted to the charges.
Next thing we'll have to pay some company somewhere enough to make them profits just for supplying us with water....
Anyone for a gallon of air? Going cheap.

There's a nest in the Landrover

Something went ker-phut with the starter motor last week so the Landie has been sit-satting there, no use to man nor beast.
Ummm, no, that's not true. Something likes stationary. It likes the convenience of a dashboard shelf. It likes being undisturbed by shake, rattle and roll. Beastie wants to make a nest, and beastie has.
No sign of life, but a very neat doughnut of soft leaves, straw, hay and moss has been formed. Is it a bird? Is it a mouse? One says former, others say t'other.
But now the Landie is fixed, so perhaps I'll never get to see the inhabitants.

A weekend of animal husbandry

I hope some of you know how to have a relaxing weekend. Saturday and Sunday are when I forget what it's like to sit down for a minute.
After the general round of feeding and watering the first task was lifting two enormous second hand pig arks off a flatbed trailer, onto another one that could be pulled by a tractor, ferrying them to their various pig paddocks and gently, gently using lengths of scaffold pole as rollers to slide them to the ground. Much scratching of heads to perfect this process; number two ark came off in seconds.
Then it was time for inveigling the weaners into the tractor link box, carting them into said paddocks and watching them run with glee and abandon, round and round and round. They found the ark and its thick bed of straw, sorted the drinker and were off again to enjoy their freedom.
Into town to satisfy my Saturday Guardian fix, buy some R clips from the tractor shop and post some hatching eggs.
What next? Mucking out the four duck and goose huts and candling the eggs in the incubator. Then I walked to the far side of the farm to bring home the eight tegs being kept to add to next year's breeding stock. They are incredibly skippity and bounce rather than trot. I had to scamper in ungainly fashion, across mud and rush and sheep poo to keep up with them. They came to a particularly muddy, squishy gateway. They yearned to go through but didn't like to get their dainty toes wet. I clanged the two buckets I had in my hands and yelled and terrified them across the sludge. Then it was full pelt, them and me, towards the gate into the field they were headed for. They haven't done this journey for many months, and then only once and in the opposite direction, but they knew where they were going. They stood back for me to open the gate and then whizzed through, heads down to nibble whatever poor grass they could find.
By now it was time to feed all the neighbours' animals as they were having a short jaunt out. I can't believe the size of their boar - he is huuuggge! Then back to put all the animals here into their pens, night time feeds and last check at everything before collapsing onto a plate of mutton stew cooked overnight in the Aga.
Sunday was the diaried day for worming and vaccinating all the sheep. Now kept in three separate flocks, everything had to be brought one flock at a time into the barn, dealt with and returned before the next bunch could be jabbed and drenched. Taking advantage of the dry weather, I clipped off any dingleberries, and squawked when I handled a soft sample. Back to the house to nailbrush vigorously under my finger nails. Yeuch.
Off to one of the top fields to burn up the brush from the hedgelaying from last month. The dogs and I play about, having a love-in moment whilst the digger pushed the massive heap of twigs onto the flames; it's so hot I have to move back and take off my jacket. After making dinner and feeding and bedding once again, I trek up to the fire and fork in the bits around the tonsure.
I head for the shower and realise to my shame, that having done the usual early morning stint in nightie, tracksuit bottoms and wellies, that I still have my nightie on. It's dark, all I'm going to do now is hoover, have supper and fall into an armchair, so after the shower I just stick a clean nightie on and hope my lapse at failing to get dressed all day is a forgivable sin. It's not as if I lay in bed all day, is it?

From mega to micro

We move from the megaspawn to the mini egg. Not of the chocolate kind, but of the duck sort. On the left, modelling the natural look of this season, is Mrs Aylesbury duck egg. It covers the palm of my hand; small hands I may have, but these eggs are considerably larger than the one from the chicken you more likely chomp with your toast soldiers.
On the right is also an Aylesbury duck egg. It's the first egg this duck has ever laid and she's working up to the fully fledged bonanza.
It was about an inch and a smidgen from top to toe and she'd forgotten to include the yolk.
That was yesterday. Today, all the eggs were of normal size. Quick learners, my ducks.

Mega spawn

Now these are amazing photos of this year's frog spawn and reminded me that it's about time to go on the jelly hunt. But I didn't expect to find megaspawn.
I counted eight separate nuclei in one bonkersly over-sized egg. What's that all about then? Conjoined froglets? Octuplet amphibians? All I could think of was the immense relief that Mama frog must have felt dumping that lot in the water.

The image of the moment

From time to time I find myself linking unexpectedly to a popular image. It might be the most adorable thing to pop up when you Google "sharpei", say, or the most spectacular of the many birds of paradise. It could be a snap of a badger, a nod to super bunny, or a reference to a dodgy moustache.
And then the numbers of visitors to this blog quadruple, leaping from an average fifty hits a day to over two hundred, and it can last for many weeks, until some other blogger or linker takes hold, or the item in question falls off the media radar.
If you had real nouse it would be possible to create a popular blog simply by inserting the zeitgeist image. But the images of the moment are not those that normally interest me. The one I've been trying to catch for weeks and failing to do so is of a pied wagtail. They fly off every time I reach for the camera, and although they are happy to bob about the yard, refuse to pose. This puny effort is the best so far; I will persevere.

Cobbo

Off to the theatre last night to see the first performance of Cobbo by Theatre Alibi.
We chortled and laughed and giggled and snorted and gasped. The full house audience wriggled with pleasure at this short, simple, effective, fantastical piece. It was particularly warming seeing a play based in the place we were in, with references to the Devon County Library, the Quay, the river and the draining of the waters from the moor down to the city.
The story of love between a woman and a swan inevitably played on mythical ties to Leda and the Swan, the young woman in the play dreaming that her mother had hatched her from an enormous egg, but although we had to firmly suspend our disbelief, the play was rooted in the here and now, not some ancient past. The supermarket checkout girl, psychoanalysing every purchase as she pushed it through the bar code reader; the prevalence and loneliness of singledom. What is timeless is the portrait of self hatred and frustration that turns into mindless violence towards the vulnerable, and the determined lack of self-knowledge and understanding beyond one's own immediate realm that ultimately makes people unlovable.
The abiding big-grin image that I have taken away from the piece is that of the swan wrapped in big women's underpants, stuffed with panty liners (with wings, of course) to deal with his guacamole-like involuntary excretions. That and the cheese biscuit swans and chocolate eggs nestled in white feathers we were served along with the booze at the end of the play (first night pleasures - oh joy).
And as I drove away from Exeter, full of sadness at unfulfilled love, there at the side of the road was a couple deep in discussion, when the woman put her arms across her face in utter despair. Oh god.

Please sir, can I have some more?

When I saw this on the news I couldn't believe it. Farmers queueing for grants, first come first served, with no reference to levels of need or strategic use of sparse funding where it would have most impact.
What next? First come first served pensions? Egg and spoon races to determine child benefits? Begging bowls for incapacity benefit and disability living allowances?
If this is how we deal with government finances, why do we need civil servants or politicians, or democratic decision-making processes? Let's just have a free-for-all; the market place has gone entirely mad.

The full cycle

Ok, I know you can't see their faces, but they are rummaging in their new indoor quarters. A great big farrowing pen has been built in the cob barn in anticipation of bringing home a Berkshire breeding sow, but for now, five new weaners have taken residence for a couple of weeks until the ground has dried out a little and they can romp as usual outside.
It's been some months since there were pigs, rather than pork, on the farm, but once the sow arrives pigs should be in permanent residence.
The pen is a massive construction of box steel frame and galvanised tin, concrete floor and inbuilt drainage. There is nothing (I hope) that a pig can get its nose underneath - the strength in those snouts is unbelievable. Once the weaners are permanently outdoors, this pen will have a creep area built in so that future piglets can get away from their mother's monstrous bulk if she threatens, inadvertently, to squash her young.
Getting home from picking up the new weaners, I rush round feeding the sheep and putting away the geese and ducks before heading back to ear tag the weaners and put them in their new pen. But there, in the duck pen is an immaculate but rather flat looking duck. Dead as a dodo.
My guess is that as this was the beginning of the laying season and we've had, as everyone knows, a cold spell, that she was egg bound. She looked fine this morning. I never thought about picking up each duck to see if they were overheated...they all looked so well.
So, new movements both on and off the farm. Spring and all its excitements of life and death is announcing that it's very nearly here.

It's a scan

Yesterday, for the first time ever, the pregnant ewes were scanned. I know, god-like, how many offspring each ewe is due to produce.
There was much rejoicing at the news that just one experienced ewe was having triplets. None of this bonkers multiple birth stuff that happened last year, then.
Lots of doubles for the more mature gels and almost all singles for the first-timers, which is just how it should be.
Those with singles have been split into a separate field from the doubles and triplet bearing mums, so the latter can receive a bit more grub.
Now I know exactly how many lambs could be born, I feel increased pressure to do whatever I can to see them through to life, but there are no guarantees. At least I won't have to poke about wondering if a ewe has dropped her full load. But of course, these things aren't failsafe.

A whole month since I saw snowdrops in London, they have finally bloomed in Devon

The minister of silly thoughts

This is utterly irresistible. You couldn't make it up.
There's this Minister of the Environment who's banned this ad because he doesn't believe in man-made climate change.
Now, if he was minister for transport, or minister for using as much electricity as possible, or minister for self-indulgent ideas, or minister with absolutely no portfolio, or minister for irony, or minister for stirring things up by saying truly daft things, or minister with the most inappropriate qualifications for his job ever, or minister for denial, or minister for sticking his head in a pillow case and then in the sand, or minister for having his cake and eating it, or minister of pillocks, or minister of laughing stocks, or...
Come on, suggestions please. What job would you give him?

Snow damage

It's weighty stuff, snow. Look what it's done to the roof of the old cow pen. And there was me thinking I'd done worrying about roofs for a few years.
Anyway, I'm too busy laughing at a letter in this Saturday's Guardian Weekend to fret.
To quote: "It's so annoying. There is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall with a lovely recipe for pheasant and bean soup (Slurp Happy, 31 January), and I've just used up all the leftover pheasant to feed the estate workers and have nothing but swan on my hands".
I'm not going to get all snotty of Tunbridge Wells about this, but it was a wonderful illustration of different worlds on one tiny island. Pheasant is cheap, local, and plentiful to many people living in the country, and I don't remember letters of disapproval heading to the paper from them when sushi ingredients, passion fruit or even the ubiquitous but far flung banana appear on the recipe pages, all of which are no doubt regular must-haves for someone.
I've just carved the breasts and legs off two braces of pheasant and jammed them in a casserole with leek, celery, butternut squash, carrot, cider and thyme. The carcases are steaming in the stockpot for soup. And there isn't an estate worker in sight, never mind a swan. Not that I could tell if there was one floundering about in this weather.

Needs must...

Well, when vehicles are out and wheelbarrows are just not making the grade, imagination takes hold. In less than twenty minutes a makeshift sledge was ready and hay could be taken (slowly, laboriously, one bale at a time) to the sheep.
This new snow fall is very different from the last - wet and heavy, slushy beneath the gorgeous surface, and a good six or more inches deep.
The farm looks wonderful, but I'm grateful that we are still eight weeks off lambing. Walking across the farm to check on the livestock is exhilarating but exhausting.

It's a white out

8 am. Poor pregnant ewes, facing off the elements, noses in troughs, building up whatever fat reserves they can to keep warm in biting weather. The black ewes are almost as white as the ones meant to be that colour.
But as the sun rises higher, the wind drops and the blizzards clear, it's glorious. The snow is perfect sparkling soft powder, about three inches thick, creaking under wellybooted foot. There are robins all over the place. Anyone would think it's Christmas.

Who lives in a hole like this?

The hole is about the size of a two pence piece. Somebody or something has created an entrance which might tunnel down to subterranean depths, or just a few inches. I certainly wasn't going to insert a finger to find out. And it was far too blustery to stand around and wait for anything to emerge.
I suspect it's a vole, but rather like the idea of an extended nest that could contain the length of a weasel.

Squirrel hounds

There's a small oak and ash copse at the far end of the farm, and Tarzan and Jane live there. They do. Honest. They swing from tree to tree, effortlessly, gracefully, competently. Usually.
Last week I watched them engage in their usual acrobatics when there was a thump as Jane (or was it Tarzan?) fell fifteen feet to the ground. Being a squirrel she/he was back up in the tree tops before I could pound my breast and alert the jungle to the news.
But now the dogs know they are in with a chance. The hollow tree from where the mighty had fallen has lots of holes and nooks and crannies and is investigated by large, damp, quiveringly excited snouts. No hidey hole is left uncharted, no bit of bark left unscraped. It happened once, they think. It'll happen again.
I do love the optimism of dogs.

I've been thinking about this ever since I heard it

Goodness, it's hard to love America, notwithstanding some great art and literature.
All that misconceived superiority, the election of cretins, the lack of universal health care, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the McCarthy era, binning Kyoto, Guantanamo, 50% of people believing in creationism and not evolution, to pick a few things that spring swiftly to mind.
And then something happens that suddenly humanises a nation that seemed anything but.
The last time I remember deliberately turning on the television during the daytime it was to watch, open mouthed, the collapse of the twin towers. On Tuesday it was to hear Barack Obama’s inaugural speech, which made me glad and hopeful and worried that too many people see a clever, able and inspiring man as a saviour and with huge relief expect him, not us, to improve our faltering world.
But just read it - an intelligent, thoughtful, determined, hugely human approach that doesn't shrug off the ignominy of the very recent past, but draws a line between the approach then and now.
Gordon Brown talked about change, change, change when he took up the UK premiereship. Huh! We can but hope that Obama will deliver where Brown just teeters on the brink of indecision and same, same, same. The world will be watching like never before.

Learning from your mistakes

I eat a lot of lettuce: rocket, little gem, lamb's lettuce, butterhead, Romaine/cos, Chinese cabbage, Webb's Wonder, salad bowl, even the universally chomped but sneered at iceberg. And though there's a polytunnel in the veg garden, I've not yet attempted to grow lettuces in it over the winter. So, in the not so productive months, when I can't resist a crunch of fresh green, I have been known to bite my lip about the food miles and buy imported salad.
But I should know better than to buy it from Spain. I can't remember when over the last few years a well-washed Spanish lettuce hasn't given me gut-churning spasms and worse. But very occasionally I forget to look at the label, or I think I'll just be extra careful with the washing. But no. Whatever it is they do to their exported salad delivers a swift and painful dose of food poisoning.
I've never found a slug in an imported lettuce; if I had, I could at least be reassured that it hadn't been blasted with a chemical cocktail containing bleach and who knows what else. And I could enjoy the extra protein for free.
Apart from exotic fruit such as mangoes, bananas and pineapple that don't grow in the UK, I am going to swear off imported foodstuffs, even if it's being sold in the local market. I know that seasonal is how it should be; that's how I eat 90% of the time, so I'm just going to have to swap my lettuce for leeks and parsnips, which are still there for the pulling in the veg patch. Complete with slug.

Brushing against the bizarre

The adverts trailing the walls alongside the escalators in the tube have always intrigued me, indicative as they are of the inner London Zeitgeist. I'm as curious about the positioning of the worn out stubs of chewing gum as I am about the content.
Coasting up the escalators this week I was reminded of how when times are tough our proffered entertainment becomes increasingly surface, aggressively light-hearted.
There was the big, round, over-made- up face of Jimmy Osmond, mascaraed and foundationed within an inch of his middleagedness. He's in Grease, which I can just about fathom, and is shortly to move to Chicago where he's to play Billy Flynn - which I find entirely unimaginable and absurd. Wondering how the little cheeky chappie of Puppy Love fame can exude the slick, sleek, sophisticated, manipulative odour of Mr Flynn (Bryan Ferry would be MY choice), nearly had me tripping over the last moving step and into the unsuspecting back of my fellow commuters.
And then there was Dame Edna Norton. Sorry, Graham. He's starring in La Cage aux Folles as Albin the drag queen. I felt as if I'd fallen back into the seventies, goggling in surprise at Danny La Rue. There were the huge ads for six packs if you would only stick to a full-on gym regime and take a heady concoction of supplements. And on it went. It was bizarre - this determinedly showbizzy presentation of life when all around me people were looking grim.
The most serious thing I could find was an ad for using tissues to avoid spreading cold germs.
And in the train, squashed far too close to everyone else in the Friday rush hour, I overheard parts of a truly odd conversation. It became clear that a teacher was talking about a colleague who was having an inappropriate relationship with a sixteen year old student. The word inappropriate was his, but he felt it wouldn't do him any good reporting it, and as the student was sixteen, it was kind of alright, wasn't it? But, he hummed and hawed, it was never really alright if you were the teacher and the sixteen year old was your student, was it? I could hear him tussling with what he'd like to call his conscience, and failing to come to any conclusions either way. The young woman he was talking to was decidedly not sitting on the fence; it was wrong in her eyes, a teacher taking advantage of a situation where a pupil should be able to trust them to do the right thing.
It reminded me of my history teacher who went out with and then married an ex-pupil shortly after she left the school. And the girl student who stole a male teacher away from his fiancee who also taught at the school. And the teacher who was mentally abusive and cruel to a pupil he went out with immediately after she left school, and.....
Life is much simpler, back in Devon. No escalators with ads, no eavesdropping train crushes. Just the odd bit of burglary, arson or murder.

Mr Micawber and me

Goodness, I'm about to sound like a real old whingeing puritan, and I failed my economics A level (it was soooo boring that I fell asleep, literally, several times in class, only ever getting the O level grade), so I probably should keep my trap shut, but...
Everyone is in an almighty panic that people aren't spending. The same way (or is it the opposite way?) that there was equal panic that everyone was maxing out their credit cards for the whole of the last decade. How can both these stances be right?
If you're facing hard times (and who isn't?) doesn't it make absolute sense to curtail your spending, wear last years clothes (in my case I still wear stuff that's twenty years old, but then I never was a fashion plate and the livestock don't give a hoot), and basically live off what you've got wherever possible? I'm not talking about UK poverty here, which is a real and separate major concern, but about those of us who have to live more frugally than we've had to in the past.
I'd have thought the press and the government would have been applauding us for not stripping the shops bare at Christmas, for being more reasoned and responsible about our expenditure, and for finally having the strength to resist the cult of more, more, more, spend, spend, spend.
I suspect that 2009 will be the year of anti-conspicuous consumption; grunge will be back. Muddy ten year old Volvo estates will be the car of choice; charity shop clothes with the Oxfam tag still swinging from the collar will be the thing; huge plasma screens bought in 2008 will only be able to show yet more re-runs of The Good Life in 2009; private schooling will gurgle down the drain; and bangers and mash with onion gravy will become the plat du jour.
For the next decade I predict:

1. money management classes in every primary and secondary school
2. the death of the Porsche
3. the digging up of flowerbeds and their replacement with veg
4. demand for allotments skyrocketing
5. downsizing, downshifting and other euphemisms for one or no income households
6. that all ex-battery hens will find a home in suburban gardens, producing cheap eggs
7. the diminishing of the cult of celebrity
8. the rise of the knitter on the train
9. less fanfare, less hubris and a curtailed Olympics
10. an emerging generation of workers with different aspirations and expectations

What are your predictions?

Keeping warm on cold nights

It was ages ago that I posted about my first visit to the Dartmoor tannery, salted lambskins heaped in the back of my car. Five months have gone by and I've been back and forth, collecting the skins and delivering more for curing.
And here is a picture of two of the resulting skins - a lambskin (right) and a sheepskin - that I've kept back to snuggle into on winter nights. I can't believe how warm and comforting they are, how they seep heat into your back and ease the efforts of the day.
What's fascinating about the Badger face is the black belly, and this results in a natural chocolate brown or black border in contrast to the creamy centre. The sheepskin (from a ewe that went for mutton), has a blacker border and shorter pile (she had been shorn a few months before), whereas the lambskins are completely unshorn, so have that curly Mongolian look that has been so fashionable the last few years. Every one is slightly different, no homogeneity here, with some having a darker base layer of fleece that gives a lovely variation in tone.
For years I've been hoping to do this but lived too far from a tannery, but now I am content that every useful bit of the sheep has a purpose.
Several were given as Christmas presents, and others are being sold, contributing to the keep of the sheep. The next batch to go includes a lamb with a big brown spot on the side; I wonder if I can justify keeping it for myself?

When you know you've arrived

I always looked with envy when I visited a farm at the beginning of a new year and saw a clutch of manufacturers' calendars nonchalantly heaped on the dresser. I reckoned that receiving freebies from the agricultural trade meant you were a real farmer.
So, I say tadaaa! I've officially made it as the real thing, for two, yes TWO 2009 calendars (freebies, gifts, free lunch stuff etc etc) are in the kitchen, proclaiming my verisimilitude to a farmer. OK, I have yet to wear a gratis boilersuit with a Massey or John Deere badge, and I haven't got a plastic thingummybob from some quad bike dealer, but you have to take these things slowly.

Minus 8 degrees facing south

It sounds like autumn underfoot, what with the crackling of fallen leaves, but it's as depths of winter as it gets, and it's the ice, not the dehydration, that crackles.
Troughs need breaking three times a day, and I worry that the animals aren't getting enough to drink, even though they rarely suck from the troughs and will be ingesting lots of moisture with their sugar-frosted feed.
But it's glorious out there if you don't need to drive; sunny, dry, cold as can be, but oh so fresh.

Left, right, left

6am and I push sleepily into the bathroom. Through the windows I can see it's soot black outside. Mind on the warmth of bed my head jerks up as I hear, distinctly, "left, right, left" being bellowed from somewhere close by. My ears strain to catch other sounds, but I can't hear any marching, trudging or even creeping.
My thoughts whirr - too much Survivors - as I imagine the farm is under siege, that the army manoeuvres on Dartmoor have gone further off the moor than usual, or that some militarily trained burglars have decided to try their luck.
Feeble, and more pressingly, cold, I leap back under the duvet, listening hard. No matter how cold it is, the window is always ajar at night, but I can't hear a thing. Half an hour later the dawn chorus gets rolling, cockerels first, then the wild life. There it is again, "left, right, left, right", only, it's not a drill sergeant, but a corvid of some kind. I wonder if it's the same crow that imitates a mobile phone?
My turn to do the animals again this morning, and it's colder than ever. I'm wearing double layer fleece gloves, so thick that my fingers are kept stretched apart. When I open one of the metal field gates my glove sticks so firmly to the latch that I have to take my hand out of the glove and tear it off, leaving a line of the beige nap behind. I walk back from the sheep and there is the welcome of the smoke from the chimney, just visible in the photo.

The order of things

Each week the order of things change by a tweak; the routine is not as routine as one might think. Animal requirements alter with the season, livestock is moved from field to field, and post-abattoir some fields are left empty for a time.
On this first day of a sparkly new year I was more conscious than usual of the adaptations of my progress through the morning hour of feeding and watering the hordes.
First task is to tend to the indoor beasts. Cats and dogs sorted, I cover up with thick gloves, jacket, hat and neoprene lined wellies and cast myself into the frozen wastes of Devon. Animals closest to the house are next in line. I go through to Little Oaky where the last batch of 2008 lambs for meat are picking disconsolately at frozen grass. I cram a bale of hay into their hayrack, scatter a few nuts for their added inner warmth, and crash through the ice covering their water trough.
It was too cold last night to fill the rubber water buckets and skips; the hoses were frozen solid, so I have to go to the dog room and fill up buckets from there, carrying several loads for the Aylesbury and Black Indian Runner ducks. It's treacherous; the water the ducks spill in great abandon round the buckets has frozen into a slippy sheet and I try to take firm steps. I let the ducks out into their runs, give them their feed and admire the heap of ice bullets that emerged from the hosepipe yesterday.
I check on the cockerels being fattened; their run has been left open and a pair of them are pecking round on the barn floor, nibbling up strands of stray wheat heads. The surplus wheat straw from the roundhouse thatching is being steadily used up for poultry bedding and the cockerels spend hours denuding the wheat ears. I corner and pick up the birds, put them back in their run, add some more feed and refresh their water.
Up to the rams' paddock, I stuff fresh hay into the makeshift rack and whistle. They both come charging up to snatch at the hay, and I check them over for bumps and bruises. Catching up a length of scaffold pole I mash through the ice in their trough, which leaves my hands ringing.
I shovel out poultry corn and goat mix into a pair of scoops and go into the orchard. I trail an equitable line of corn on the ground for the geese and let them out of their hut, smashing the ice in their trough too. I stand and watch them for a while; Frankie the gander lords it about but is careful only to hiss at me once I've already moved off to check on the ewes in Long Lands. All ewes present and correct I put the goat mix in the llama's bucket out of sheep reach, crack the ice in their trough and check on the hay situation - they'll need more this morning. The old landrover is hooked up to the battery charger and is full of fencing tools so I stuff a couple of bales in the back of my car and take it up to the sheep by road, turfing the bales over the gate, ram the loosened bales in with foot and fist, so that I can make some attempt to close the lid of the hayrack.
I fill a barrow with logs and take it back to the house; time for my own breakfast and to salute the new year.

The George

So, this is the aftermath of the terrible fire that has utterly destroyed The George (this is what it looked like before the fire).
There is nothing left worth saving; a door, a sash window, one cast iron manger used as a flower basket. A week after the fire there are still small plumes of smoke rising from the debris and the whole town smells of doused bonfire.
The site looks so small, so diminished, from what was a smart, imposing building.
The house next door must be at risk; the joining wall looks a disaster of crumbled red cob.
It was market day in Hatherleigh today, and people had come to look and reminisce and see for themselves what they couldn't really believe from the television, the papers and the chat.

Christian cheer

Just before Christmas I was in a church not a million miles away with a bunch of friends, listening to the most awful Christmas concert imaginable. Truly awful - I should have backed out when I heard the electric organ twang in lift musak fashion as I entered. There were candles everywhere, on all the pews and tucked into every churchy crevice.
On top of the extraordinary tinkling, twangy sounds provided for the audience's pleasure, we were preached at from the pulpit by a lay orator between each musical offering. I didn't know that smugness and self satisfaction were Christian virtues, but being an atheist, I might have got that wrong. Certainly, there was no humility on show.
I have long hair. I smelled burning. The man in the pew behind grinned at me in unchristian fashion as my locks crinkled and burned on his little pew candle. I wanted to throttle the smug bastard. Instead, I filled the church with singeing pong and left in the interval to stick pins in a wax effigy.
Far better were the Christmas carols in Hatherleigh square on Christmas eve. The Hatherleigh Silver Band played beautifully, and as I walked up from the cattle market, arrived to the sounds of a gorgeous, plaintive Silent Night. The service lasted just 30 minutes and ended with delicious mulled cider and minced pies. There was a great sadness and coming together, all in mourning for the loss of the George, the ruins in full view from the square.

On the first day...

...the two flocks were brought one at a time into the barn, the rams hived off into a small pen, the ewes amalgamated and sent gently back to pasture for the rest of their confinement.
Toyboy and Samson were not happy. First, they'd lost their lady-loves, and second, their machismo was severely under threat from another young male. Toyboy, the older by a couple of years, was certainly in the ascendant. He butted and chinned and swiped as much as the highly restricted pen allowed. I left them with hay and water and very limited space to get to know each other.
On the second day, Toyboy was standing guard over the haynet. I fed Samson by hand and then put up a second net on the opposite side of the pen to give my black boy a chance to feed. I wasn't going to make their area bigger yet; rams can kill if they have enough of a run up and the will to damage an opponent.
On the third day I stood and observed. They were sharing haynets. Time to enlarge the pen by adding in a couple more sheep hurdles. A bit of minor argybargy ensued. Toyboy is definitely top dog.
On the fourth day a bit of a schoolboy ribbing is taking place, but the SAS mentality has retreated. Toyboy is the alpha male, but Samson is eating boldly from whichever haynet he likes and is unharmed.
On the fifth day I dismantle the pen entirely and give the two rams the run of the barn. Mayhem and madness ensue. As soon as there is room to do so, Toyboy runs backwards and charges full pelt and head on into Samson. The smack resonates round the barn and I pick up a hefty piece of 4x2. As Toyboy chases Samson round the weigh crate I position myself, legs anchored, and just as Toyboy is about to butt a head spinning Samson for a third time I intervene with my thwacking stick. Toyboy stops and thinks for a moment, and then entirely unfazed gallops in reverse, fllicks into first gear and charges again and again. But my stick comes between them and Toyboy gets no joy. I refill the haynets and the water bucket and stop to watch the boys dance about; it's a game of Glasgow kiss-chase that Samson can't win. Samson has been told that he is at the bottom of the food chain and submits to his fate.
On the sixth day, the two rams stand side by side, looking up at me as if butter wouldn't melt.
On the seventh day I open the gate to the rams paddock, fetch a small scoop of sheep nuts in a bucket, and open the barn door. Toyboy runs after me, eager for the nuts. Samson follows behind. Into the paddock, gate shut, reinforced with an old metal gate to stop them barging their way out. The ice in their trough is broken up. Hay is served. Samson wanders about snatching at the fresh grass. Toyboy follows him, not wanting to stray too far from his new best mate.
What a palaver. But so far, I have two live rams, no blood spilled, both contented to spend their off-duty time together.

Getting ready for the hols

Christmas eve is my time for getting ready for Christmas day as far as the grub is concerned. The goose and red cabbage with apple have been slid out of the freezer and defrosted. I've made the chestnut and apricot stuffing, wrapped prunes and sausages in streaky bacon, simmered the goosey giblets for stock to make the gravy, dug up the parsnips and beetroot for roasting, watched the bread sauce glub on a low heat and made a fish pie for tonight. The house already smells like Christmas, and there's just sprouts to prepare and an apple pie left to make.
I've walked the dogs and listened to the dessicated oak leaves still clinging to the trees tremble and susurrate in the light breeze, and sploshed through the sodden lower fields which stamps out any other sound.
The banks are full of holes. No, I hadn't ventured onto a High Street near you or into the City. The Devon banks are full of holes and the lack of foliage reveals all the rabbit workings, fox diggings, badger scrapings, shrew, vole and stoat earthworks. Every yard reveals recent activity; disturbed earth, droppings, heaps of dried grass, discarded twigs, acorn cups and natural detritus of all kinds.
At 3pm the light starts to fail, at 4.30 all the birds are put away for the night. Christmas is coming, fast and furious. Hope you have a good one.

Postscript:
Our local pub, The George, burned down last night after six centuries of existence. Everyone is shocked by the loss of this beautiful and ancient building, and rumour is rife about how it started.

There's an ugly duckling on my roof

Putting the birds away at dusk I heard this bizarre squawking. It didn't sound like a Barn owl screech to me, but whatever it was caused great disturbance to my duck flocks; they huddled in the corner of their runs, hunkered down as if there was a fox about. I couldn't see or smell anything untoward, but as usual wildlife knows best.
As I came down the farm track towards the house I noticed through the gloom a large bird sitting on the ridge of the roof midway between the chimney pots. It was clearly a duck, but not what I'd call a thing of beauty. The Muscovy or Barbary duck is the turkey of the waterfowl world - basically it has an excess of skin around its face. I cannot love this breed.
I doubt it will go anywhere in the dark, but will probably fly back home once it's light; some folk down the road have Muscovies that perambulate the lanes oblivious to the (admittedly rare) traffic.
You never know what will turn up next. I'm still waiting to come across a zebra, although considering the state of the land, a water buffalo or croc might be more the thing.

Photo by Stuart Brown

The big melt

Weather warnings across the South West not to drive, and I don't hear about it until I'm out in the car, you know, driving. It's clear that water has whooshed down the roads overnight, leaving huge mounds of leafy, twiggy and branchy detritus. The gullies are roaring streams and the river is just contained within its banks, having subsided from the surrounding fields. Everywhere water. My twenty year old Puffa, without even the vaguest memories of waterproofing, is quickly soaked through, and I keep warm if not dry, by hurling soiled straw out of bird huts into the wheelbarrow as quickly as possible.

Who knew the Clangers were pink?

The news is full of praise for Oliver Postgate. If nothing else it reflects the age of those editing the news. Like me, they must have grown up with and loved those surreal, utterly captivating and made-with-bits-of-fabric-and-tin-found-in-the-shed props that populated Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog and the Clangers. I must have watched it on a black and white telly, as I remember the Clangers as grey, while all the photos (and Youtube clips) reveal them as baby pink, and more reminiscent of George, the hippo who starred with Zippy, than a moon-based knitted mouse with an anteater nose should be.
A schoolfriend nick-named me Noggin the Nog for several terms; I never really understood why, but enjoyed the sound it made in my mouth.
I suspect I was getting too old for these delights by the time Bagpuss came on the scene. I liked the soft sepia beginning and end when the soft baggy cat snoozed, but I barely took in the main action; that woodpecker held no charms for me.
I remember the Clangers' soup dragon and the permanent supply of broth from within the bowels of the moon, and as a child I recreated my own version. My bed was its own universe, with everything I needed on hand (comfort, books, warmth, quiet) apart from food. So I imagined little taps and dumbwaiters in the wall by the bed that would deliver goodies on demand. Strangely, favoured deliveries were chicken hearts (the family always argued who got the one from the Sunday roast), and spaghetti - either with meatballs, or in vermicelli form floating in chicken soup. No chocolates or crisps or pop featured, although the odd slice of warm, thickly cut white bread with plenty of unsalted butter surely did, as white was restricted to my Father, and the rest of us gnawed healthily on stoneground wholemeal.
And thinking of animalistic colour surprises, I saw my first kingfisher on the farm this week. Walking across Bull's Field, a particularly marshy, reedy pasture with a deep ditch that runs with spring and rain water no matter the season, I saw a startling bravura of azure rise from beneath the lush ferny undergrowth that curtains the sides of the ditch. It was lost for a moment as it flitted through the black willow branches, and then shone bright against the sky before heading off above the hedgeline. Sometimes it's worth having land so spongy with water that wellies are required footwear even at the height of summer. I wonder if there are fish living in the ditches, or if frog was the plat du jour for my little blue bird?

Straying from home

Taunton, Wadebridge, Exeter, Birmingham, Cardiff, Exeter again, London, Bournemouth... a ten day crazy merry-go-round of trains and cars, rails and roads, delays and traffic snarls, eating up the miles and the hours. Every time I close the farm gate behind me and set off in the car for the hour long drive to the station, I feel as if I'm straying from home, as if the travelling is against nature, both my own and of the way of things. It's as if I hold my breath the whole time I'm away and can only take a fresh, clean gasp once the gate shuts with me safely inside.
I've given up driving long distances unless it's entirely impractical to go by train, so I can read and write and think as I thunder cross country, but even so, it's such a waste of life and I resent every bit of it, which doesn't enhance my mood. Far from believing that travel broadens the mind, I now find it entirely inane, stuck in a canister with hundreds of others, also wishing they were elsewhere.
I wonder if the desire to be a homebody, a farmbody, is a danger; that I wouldn't see beyond the end of my nose, but I don't think that would happen. Lifes swirls round me quite energetically enough, my brain has to work harder than ever, the people I meet are as fascinating and rich in attitude and thought as I could wish, and there's a warmth that cannot exist in the commuter zone.
I will try and plan my diary more carefully and balance the away time less generously. Thank credit crunchie it's friday and I'm home.
And to celebrate, here's a photo taken today of the ewe lambs I'm keeping back for adding to the breeding flock next year.

The frost report

Gloves are now a key part of the outdoor pocket patting repertoire, alongside checking for penknife and baler twine. My pockets are getting more like those of a small boy every day: grubby hanky, acorns and rosehips, useful bit of string, chunk of wood, bent nails, dusty handful of ewe nuts.
The gloves are to stop my fingers sticking to the metal field gates and suffering freezer burn. I have to huhh on the gate latches like some heavy breather to melt the ice so that I can open the gate. I'd rather walk through than go over at the moment as it's rather treacherous climbing over the gates as the bars are so slippery with frost, but I do it when I have to and hope I won't find myself dazed on the hard ground with the sheep looking down at me still waiting for their hay.

The first of the month

December arrived with a vengeance today. The first time that I've crunched rather than splashed across fields to feed the sheep, and every water trough surface had to be smashed; inch-thick ice stretched opaquely over each one.
The holly berries are out in great clusters, vying with the rosehips and occasional string of bryony for who can do the scarlet drapery thing best.
It's all very festive, but it's incredibly difficult to poke my nose from beneath the duvet when I know it's my turn to do the animals.

Time out

It's been over a week since I've had time to play blogger rather than farmer, trainer, or consultant. I've been shooting about like a mad ferret and the lead up to Christmas looks as if nothing's gonna change soon. I'm already planning a New Year's resolution; do more of the stuff I love, less of the stuff I don't, and tighten my belt.
So, although wearing slatey grey eyebags that would only lighten with copious applications of sleep, I kept an appointment made months ago to get up and go fairly early this morning with a friend off to the Devon and Cornwall Waterfowl Show at the Royal Cornwall Showground.
I had my eye on getting some more Black Indian Runner ducks to join Beany and co, so slid along the for sale section, clocked a nice young pair, shoved over to the Treasurer's desk, paid over my beer vouchers and clicked a sold label onto the cage so that I could go and admire the show birds at leisure.
Many shows auction their birds, so you have to wait hours if the pens you are keen on have high numbers, and you have no idea how optimistic the bidding will be. I much preferred this civilised approach - each pen had a clear price tag, and if there was no sold label, you sauntered apparently casually, but actually at top speed, to put down your dosh and the deal is done. No argy bargy, no haggling, no competition. Lovely.
The long lines of runner ducks of every colour on show had me enthralled (only the white runners are on show in this photo). Unlike the other ducks of a more squat stature in square cages, runners are given tall pens to accommodate their naturally vertical stance. They stand in lines like soldiers on parade. It's a good thing they weren't all for sale or I'd have come home with armfuls of the beauties.
I iffed and butted over two pens of Silver Appleyard ducks for a friend, but closer inspection revealed imperfections that I wouldn't have been happy with, so I resisted. I chortled over the Sebastopol geese - a lovely example in the photo above - with their crazy ringleted feathers, the Shirley Temple of the waterfowl world.
The only problem was that the huge cattle barn the event was held in was freezing. It was colder inside than out - we shivered as we walked into the shed and my feet were numb in ten minutes. There were very few people there; much more body heat was needed to create a comforting guff. But I'm back in the warm now, and my two new black beauties are on straw, with feed and water, and getting over the trauma of the journey and their new home.

La la land and my reality

For my birthday earlier this month I received a very welcome clutch of Persephone books. On top was The Country Housewife's Book by Lucy H Yates.
I'm sure that Persephone have reproduced part of the Introductory Note on the jacket with a significant part of tongue jammed in cheek, suggesting perhaps that this book is first and foremost a curiosity and of social historical interest, but it made perfect sense to me. I quote:

"...so often it is the unexpected that happens. There may... occur a glut of Milk, and it must be used to some good purpose or have to go down the drain; or a crop of fruit or vegetable may reach the stage when it must be gathered or it will utterly spoil, yet the materials for preserving are not ready; or some well-meaning friend drops a bag of game or half a dozen rabbits at the door; and everything else must be put aside."

It might be odd to some, but this is a reasonable précis of chunks of my life. Look at that array of preserves, a small sample of a range of stuff all of which were produced in a fingers crossed there's enough sugar/vinegar/jars or bottles mood. Unlike Lucy Yates, I always have to peel off the old labels and scoop the spiders out of my jars before I get rolling, and have in the past begged a handful of carrots destined to feed water voles from a neighbour to finish the chutney. And the freezer is fair jammed with rabbit casserole and dressed pheasants awaiting a future pot roasting thanks to my very own well-meaning friends.
What did crack me up was not the expectation that a country housewife would grow and minister to her own veg and fruit plots, spend her evenings hanging jelly bags filled with soft fruits from chair legs, or making Mangel Wurzel wine (yuk - alcoholic swede beverage anyone?) but would bizarrely cater for Tennis Parties (oh yes, definitely upper case), and offer a Scheherazade special, otherwise known as Strawberry Sherbet.
No doubt the CH would knit the tennis net out of runner bean climbers, and shove the pigs out of their patch to create a court with one hand, whilst simultaneously scattering Arsenate of Lead in all the outhouses to kill off any wood lice with the other. Perhaps one's cheek is, after all, the best place for a CH's tongue.

Round and round we go!

I go away for the day and stuff happens. As I drove off in the morning I passed the scaffolder's lorry and crossed my fingers that they were on the way to the farm. I got back at 10pm and it was too dark to see anything, but this morning I kept the ducks, geese and sheep waiting as I rushed about in curious glee, poking at this and that, finally able to feel all about and inside the roundhouse without having to bend double beneath scaffold planks or get poked in the eye by the poles.
I am completely charmed by it, and want to set up house with a dainty tea set and teddy bears. Or hang a white sheet against the wall and have panoramic cinematic splendour with friends, handing popcorn through the windows (salted through one and sweet sticky toffee through the other). Most of all I want to be entirely naff and hang a huge glitter ball from the roof and bop to Queen and the Stones as the mirrored lights twinkle and spark off the stone. My party palace.

A year in and we're nearly done

Just before my birthday last year the builders arrived. I was psyched up for an 18 month flurry of demolition and rebuild, but I've just had another birthday and the chaps are nearly finished, months ahead of schedule. Just a few days of activity remain. I'm so excited I can hardly believe that the barns are nearly back to where they were decades ago, and looking beautiful.
The last of the scaffolding will disappear this week and then I can post photos of the thatched roundhouse which is tucked behind the threshing barn shown here.
For my birthday, the barns were floodlit so that party guests could ooh and aah as they came down the track, and they did; it was most heart warming. Best of all the nine dovecotes in the cob barn had tealights popped in them, and deep in the cob they were safe from the dramatic winds that howled round and the flames twinkled for five hours. Any birds taking shelter in there will be able to bring up cosy young.

Western world preoccupations

I know that you can get terribly maudlin about the state of humanity, and spend a lifetime weeping pointlessly into your beer or beard about things you intend to do nothing much about - infant mortality, torture, abuse of human rights and so on. But there are times when media preoccupations are downright obscene considering what is truly important, and when the ability to value what's significant is appallingly flawed.
This whole week's nonsensical fixation on two light entertainment figures having made a daft balls-up made me want to chuck the whole media industry into a large blender and flick the switch. I wasn't madly bothered about the Russian oligarchy losing its roubles, although I had a moment of unsurprised horror when I read that $70 billion of the $700 billion coughed up by the ailing US government to prop up the financial sector would be going to pay bonuses to those workers who still somehow thought they had reached their performance targets.
But what really pulled me up short was a story so utterly horrific that I couldn't understand why it wasn't front page news and the leader for every TV bulletin.

Somalian rape victim, 13, stoned to death.

There aren't many stories in the press that can make me cry with shame and horror. This did.

Lurve

I was as eager as the rams to get them in with the ewes this morning, so I rushed my animal feeding and bedding chores and then did my little shepherdess act and moved the lambs through the yard into an empty field to ensure no underage distractions.
Yes, I should have waited for help but Toyboy is so single minded that I didn't expect any problems. I opened his gate, waved a scoop of nuts under his nose, and trotted off quick smart expecting him to follow. He did, and at a cracking pace. I had to hare across the intervening field to open the gate to the harem before he had time to consider bashing through and claim droit de seigneur. Gate open, chap in, girls eager and much mutual circling and greeting. With 19 ewes to serve he hardly knew where to start.
Moving Samson was definitely a two person job. He has spent the past month pacing in anticipation, fairly wearing himself to a frazzle of sexual frustration and snatches half-heartedly at grass and hay between the real business of leering at unreachable totty. With a bit of ushering and the use of a thick rope as a halter he was encouraged through gates and fields until he saw his goal. He was off like a shot, a series of frenzied hellos, and two ewes served within the minute. I left him to it.

Rounding up the cattle - wild West Devon style

I was wearing wellies, not cowboy boots, and a fleece hat rather than a stetson, but there I was, blocking the entrance to one of the potentially distracting offshoots that the herd might prefer to their route home. Wasn't sitting on a hos either, but the stampede was wild west enough for me.
All round about here, cattle are being taken indoors for the winter, and those summered out on the farm and the one adjoining were being collected to cavort the few miles home through the Devon lanes. We were primed and ready in place, and could hear the quads motoring across soggy fields. And the engines continued to roar and still no sign of beasts. 45 minutes later a cloud of steam heralded hot-blooded action. They had eluded the cowboys for a good while and were overheated and overexcited and full of beans. Their great feet clattered on the road and as soon as they saw me screeched to a standstill. I stepped back and they nosed forward, gathered pace and were off again. It was all I could do to restrain myself from yelling Yeehaaa!

Electronic tagging for sheep

I'm having an ill-informed panic. I have no idea yet what the consequences will be. I don't know how the farm will be affected. But all around me there are rumours and facts posing as rumours washing around regarding the need for sheep to be electronically tagged by the end of 2009. According to Europa, "Electronic identifiers cost around 1-2€ per animal, hand-held readers are available from around 200€ and static readers from around 1000€. Farmers and operators will be responsible for the costs of meeting the requirement to electronically identify every sheep and goat. However, these costs should be offset by better disease control measures resulting from more effective identification".
For me that's simply an unaffordable prospect with a flock of 25- 30 ewes. I'd hope that there can be some kind of co-operative sharing among small farmers, but that's not easy to sort, even when surrounding farmers are eager to support each other. This was brought home by the attempts at minimising the waste of necessary but expensive Bluetongue vaccine; the stuff has to be used within 8 hours, and if you didn't need a whole bottle, or needed one or two doses more than a bottle, a mad ring-round ensued, with the vets dispensing the stuff unable to help with this logistical nightmare.
I need to find out more and come back to this when I feel better informed. Meantime, I'm having a gloom moment about the future of small farmers.

Crutching

A day of preparation. Just one week to go before the rams (Toy-boy and Samson) are reintroduced to their laydeez, so the girls need titivating and trimming. The area around their tails is crutched, which is basically a mini-shearing session, removing the heavy fleece on their tails, back legs and bottom to keep them clean, offer easy access to the chaps, and hopefully in five months time still offer visible access to the udder when lambing gets going.
Because Badger Face sheep are meant to keep their long tails unlike many other breeds that have their tails ringed within the first few days of life, they look particularly daft without the fleece, carrying incongrously naked bell-pull tails.
Once wormed and bikini waxed, the black Torwens and white Torddus were split into separate fields so that the rams can tend to their own and generate purebred offspring, which gives me the option of selling breeding stock if there are some particularly choice examples born.
For another seven days the chaps will grow increasingly whiffy, testosterone oozing wildly and filling the air with the unmistakeable scent of rampant ram.

Hibernating

Hard Hattie is getting slow and sluggish, and I expect to find her snoozing deep in her box of straw before long. She and her cosy box will be put in a rat-free cool shed for her hibernation and checked regularly.
I'm wondering about making plans to join her. What with the BBC ten o'clock news tonight being so very gloomy about employment, money, home repossessions and the like, I think I'd prefer to stick my head in a straw box and wake up when it's all over. How people can lose their homes when governments are prepared to shore up the banks is completely beyond me; why isn't the money going to pay the mortgages instead?
Apparently farming and government spending are the only two areas not slowing down at the moment... and I don't believe that will last. Bah humbug and all that.

Drunk on apple fumes

68 litres of juice and 145 litres of cider later, I'm ready to fall into a soft sofa in front of the fire. First there was the picking and sorting, then the carrying, the washing, the milling, the pressing, the bottling, the labelling. Not forgetting the sterilising of buckets and bottles and barrels and funnels and the twiddling of bottle brushes of every size and shape to get into those hard to reach corners.
Friends have helped and used the kit all weekend too, so the machines have been worked hard. I suppose 400 litres of juice destined for both alcoholic and breakfast beverage has been churned out in total. Enough to keep us hydrated for quite some while.
The milling and pressing was done in the cob barn...finally it can be put to use.

Incredible structures

From domestic micro roundhouses to huge macro industrial structures that fill the horizon.
Whistled along the Severn Bridge to bounce through Wales en route for Herefordshire and some new additions to the flock.
The travelled through landscapes of Devon, Somerset, Wales and Herefordshire are all so distinctive, all beautiful.
But home is always best. So glad to get back and let the shearlings out of the trailer.
I checked in the barn and yes, the hired cider press and mill had been delivered - a whole weekend of cider making and apple juicing ahead.

OOOH, OOH, OOOH, OOOOH!!!

First they made a huge continuous serpent of wheat straw, the eaves wad, to go round the complete perimeter of the roundhouse walls, and now, the bundles or more correctly, yealms, are being put into place. It makes me want to barn dance!

The roundhouse takes shape

Just because I've been busy with sheep doesn't mean that the world of barn restoration has come to a halt. Oh no. The cob barn is likely to be finished today, and yesterday the thatchers started on the roundhouse, putting up battens to take the locally sourced wheat straw. The roundhouse is behind the threshing barn, and touches the road, and so is in full view of the few souls that drive past in their tractors and trucks.
The thatchers will be on site for three or four weeks, and having filled their bellies with blackberry and apple crumble to make sure their boots are leaden and keep them up there, I will report on progress.
It's hard to take shots of the roundhouse as there are few viewing points far enough back to capture its full glory. The photos below show the progress to date, from the demolishing of the ruins to today's grand efforts.

Gralloching, lairage and more

Health warning - don't scroll down if you'd rather avoid seeing pictures taken in an abattoir.

I love a day when new words come pouring into my ear. Or when words I sort of think I kind of know, finally start to make sense.
Today was a day that I knew I would have to meet head on at some point. I've been trogging lambs and pigs to the abattoir for many years now, but I hadn't ever seen the process from start to finish. Thanks to the incredibly useful EBLEX who run short courses for meat producers on all sorts of areas crucial to the farmer, I finally saw the whole story.
It's key that your animals are slaughtered at the right time: when they are at the best rate of fat to lean. Too fat, and they have to be trimmed and you've spent weeks feeding your livestock unnecessarily, expensively and to the detriment of your meat. Too lean, and you'll have a flavourless, scrawny chop on your plate and dissatisfied customers. A lamb is covered in fleece, so you have to get (gentle) hands on to find out when each individual lamb is ripe and ready. There's a Europe wide classification system for lamb based on a combination of fatness and conformation used by every abattoir and every butcher and every supermarket and every wholesale and retail purchaser. Getting it right on a live animal is as much an art as a science. This is not something you absorb through rural osmosis, but something you have to be taught, and it has to be practised so you keep your hand in.
Today's course was held at a huge local abattoir, and run by two extremely knowledgeable, jolly and helpful experts. We looked at the charts, we had the pictures explained, and then we went to the lairage (nice new word number one) to grade ten pre-selected lambs.
I fondled a scrawny article, a fat beast and one that was fat but had unequal conformation, and then another seven lambs along the spine, loin, shoulder, tail and between the legs to arrive at an estimated grade for each. Then it was on with the white boilersuit, hairnet and hard hat, a disinfect of wellies and hands, and into the processing area.
The scale of the thing took my breath away: a continuous line of machinery, people and lambs, with everyone focussed on their task, executing it cleanly, swiftly, carefully and with the right tools for the job. We were asked if we wanted to see the slaughter, and no-one baulked. It was so calm, professional, simple, with the layout designed to cause nil stress to the animal or the slaughterer. I watched several animals being stunned and throats cut. I wanted to make sure I saw the reality of where my animals are headed, and I felt nothing other than reassurance and thanks that such an important role in the food chain was being so expertly undertaken.
We followed the line as skins were removed, guts discarded (for deer this process is called gralloching - second new word of the day) and offal inspected. We were shown examples of condemned livers - suffering from tapeworm or fluke and other parasites - and also arthritic joints that meant a leg or more might be spurned as unfit for human consumption. Every liver and heart is kept alongside its carcase; if there is something wrong with these organs, the meat might also be compromised, and it is thoroughly checked. I saw the results of injecting against Bluetongue in the wrong muscles (the neck is the recommended place), and that lambs were being sent both too thin and too fat to slaughter.
We watched the professional grader determine the score of each lamb, the automatic weighing, the tingling with electric current, which reduces the need for hanging by tenderising the meat (hmm...not sure about that one), and then headed for the chiller, where the ten lambs we'd attempted to score were now tagged with the official result.
Out of the seven I'd guessed, I only got one spot on, but the other six were only one grade out, so I was reassured that I can pretty much tell what I'm looking for.
I take my animals to a small farm slaughter house, and the system is nowhere near as mechanised as this, but I will see if they can give me the condition scores and if my estimates improve.
And if you fancy a few more good meaty words in the gralloch mode, you gut a fish, paunch a rabbit and draw a chicken.

Samson awaiting his Delilah

Not a great photo as it was dusk and he didn't want to pose, but here is the new Torwen ram, Samson, wormed, Heptavac'd, toes trimmed and in isolation for three days before putting him out to pasture. No wonder he looks depressed. But come 1st November he can make whoopee.

Synchronicity

I seem to be travelling up to London on an almost weekly basis at the moment, usually there and back in one day, rising at 6am and falling back with a crash around 11pm. I come through the door surrounded by capering dogs and excitable kittens, head for the loo, squint at the red-eyed travel weary face in the mirror and fall on the pillows.
In the train on the way up I prepare for the day ahead, making notes, reading papers, gathering thoughts. But on the way back I'm desperate to concertina the hours of travelling into a moment, and ferret in my bag for the book of the day.
I seem to be in a world of Eastern European immigration; first with Lewycka's Two Caravans, which I warmed to (loved that Dog), and then Rose Tremain's The Road Home, which is fantastic.
As a novel moves its way into the final trimester, you don't necessarily expect new moments. Mostly you get more of the same, whether it be beauty, brutality, murder or machinations, but those last chapters of Tremain's both made me laugh out loud in the quiet carriage, and spout tears.
It may be predictable to enjoy plot quite so much, but I want a story, the revelation and development of character, pain and pleasure, hurt and happiness. I WANT the predictable AND the ridiculous, and I got both with Tremain; the old lady leaves a righteous legacy, and the Chinese asparagus pickers carry out an unexpected service.
There are many moments of recognition between the two novels, as if little windows of a shared world collide and then drift: the twinned Chinese characters; the hopes and dreams of the immigrant; the dodgy employment opportunities; the brotherhood of nations in a foreign space; the ineffectiveness of bureaucracy; the realism of old peoples' homes. Such different books, so many mutual presences.
I stroked the cover of Tremain's book after I'd finished the last sentence. I wanted to absorb her talent, share her gift. It was a feast.

Death at the weekend

It's harvest time. The number of surplus cockerels raised for meat is being diminished by twos each weekend. The Aylesbury drakes are fattening nicely and it'll be their turn soon. This week two of the pigs are off to the butcher. The remaining three Berkshires are booked in as are the second batch of lambs.
The freezers will judder into life and host a year's supply of meat and poultry, and the horrendous livestock feed bills will be cut dramatically. Poultry feed has jumped from £6.50 per 25k to £8.50 in less than six months. How organic farmers make any kind of living with their feed at Harrods prices, is beyond me.
We've heard a great deal this year about poultry farming and the real price of properly raised chicken. I suspect all the good awareness raising will be mowed down in the face of job losses, house repossessions and the general gloom of depression.
What I do know, is that my dressed weight 3.5 lb - 4lb cockerel tastes amazing, and that not even the poshest organic shop-bought bird can start to compare. Why this is, I don't know, but my birds head towards the guinea fowl in flavour (which I adore), have a density of meat that is really satisfying, and that every single scrap (excepting heads, feet, and colon) will be eaten.

Teeth, tits and toes

There comes a point in every ewe's life when she has to undergo the indignity of the teeth, tits and toes regime. Can she still nibble? Check. Is she free of lumps and bumps on the all crucial udder? Check. Are her feet in good order? Check. Those that don't pass muster are destined for the mutton wagon. It's a cattle market out there.
Every year, a month or two before tupping time, you go through this process, weeding out those not fit for another season of lambing. Today was the day and just one girl hasn't make the grade. Thank goodness that there are champions for mutton, and that there are pockets of interest in this delicious meat and the concept of long, slow cooking.
Toy-boy get his toes trimmed too, so that he can dance the fandango with the girls on the 1st November without worrying about bunions.

No invitation to the ball

Someone had a party and didn't invite me. No reason why they should, but leaving celebratory markers to push the point home seems a little unfriendly.
I'd spent the morning cleaning duck, goose and hen houses and plucking a couple of cockerels for the freezer. I put some of her much loved tomato out for the tortoise, admired the KPs (kitten pusses - sorry), and watched the dogs stretched out in the autumn sun waiting for my call.
The lambs have been split into groups, with the ones destined for the next butcher batch chewing the best meadow grass by the river, at the furthest reach of the farm. This means a daily trog to the river no matter the weather, and the dogs love it. Starting off across the orchard I could see something cobalt and artificial bobbing about behind some gorse. I thought it was a rambler picking a few blackberries, and then decided to go and check just in case it was something that needed dealing with. Much of the helium had leached out, and trapped tightly between bramble and old fencing, this sad little offering wasn't going anywhere without a tug. There wasn't even a note attached to the long streamer. A bottle without a message.

Nuts

It is SO autumn. The Virginia Creeper that drapes the cottage on the way to town is ablaze, the leaves are dropping from the young fruit trees in the orchard, the bedspread was slung onto the bed to warm my shivery shoulders last night, and the squirrels are nicking all the nuts.
The acorns are ripe, and a gentle tap sends them cascading to the ground, leaving their school caps behind them. But can I find any hazelnuts to munch? In 11 kilometres of hedgerow on the farm I found a smattering of samples, the evidence of a good crop nicely gnawed and lying empty on the ground. No doubt there are snug hoards hidden from view for winter snacks, but none for me.

Roof update

More than a month after the clever breathable membrane was put in place, we now have a fully slated roof. The weather has been ghastly and it just ain't safe sliding around up there in the wet. Just two bits of roof left to do now: the stable roof in the same reclaimed slate, just to the left of the photo and attached to the threshing barn; and the round house roof, behind the barn, also attached. The round house will be thatched which is a process I've never really seen up close and personal, so there will be reports and photos. Soon the oak for the huge barn doors will have to be ordered and there will be feverish carpentering, flying sawdust and ringlets of paper thin timber paving the ground and the workshop.